hard to imagine a more exotic tie than the one between Costa Rica and China, but the key contest in that match was between the Manchester City center- forward Paulo Wanchope and the Dun- dee and former Crystal Palace center- back Fan Zhiyi. Manchester Cityversus Crystal Palace we can get at home, thank you very much. C lub football may have spoiled our appetite, but it has also, in all senses of the word, spoiled the players. It used to be the aspiration of every professional footballer to play in the World Cup, but this time around there was a grow- Ing sense that, for some of the wealthi- est-especially those who didn't have the good fortune to play for one of the stronger footballing nations-it was an unattractive alternative to a well- earned beach holida)T. The midfielder Roy Keane, whose club side, Manches- ter United, is significantly better than his international side, Ireland, report- edly told his national coach, Mick Mc- Carthy, "You are a crap manager. . . and you're not even Irish, you English cunt. You can stick it up your bollocks." (Maybe Keane was simply troubled that McCarthy was, as far as we know, the only hermaphrodIte coach at the World Cup.) "} can buy you, your house, and your family;" Zlatko Zahovic, of Slove- nia, told his manager. "You were a dick- head player and you're the same as a coach." The coaches concerned, clearly ,//\ n - .t I' =- j : j/ rf1 . .f { 1'. M iD / c: \.. ", /' IJ $';; "?-(' -. having decided that their star players were not going to be much fun in the squad bingo sessions, sent Keane and Zahovic home. Most of the stars who did turn up were either exhausted or injured. Zi- dane, arguably the best player in the world, sat out France's first two games and made only a sad, tired contribution in the third; David Beckham, of En- gland, attempted to play just weeks after breaking a bone in his foot and, though he was considerably better than you or I might have been in similar circum- stances, he was far below his best; the formerly astounding Ronaldo, of Brazil, was merely brilliant, having undergone years of debilitating surgef)T. Several key players-Robert Pires, of France; Steven Gerrard, of England; Sebastian Deis- ler, of Germany-didn't make it on the plane to Asia in the first place. (If it has achieved nothing else, the 2002 tourna- ment has finally demonstrated to the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA, football's world governing body, that the best players play too many competitive games and get kicked much too often.) What we were left with was what the Oscars would be like if Hollywood forgot to fill out the nomination forms: how- ever often you told yourself that it was good to see so many Belgian actors and Taiwanese directors up for awards, you'd still end up itching for a glimpse of Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. The ,jf":." ": : ..? . X" t^. ... . ., :.. h........:>>>. .:_. . . _!íl. t;: ' "'\f:!!$j1f \,;" ....:: i '?:": .(!:;: .... Ý III{ World Cup is about stars, and this time around many of the stars either didn't show up or left well before the prizes were presented. T he best and most engrossing story of the competition was the sensa- tional progress of South Korea, and the scenes of pandemonium that greeted each victory. Korea began the group stage, in which four teams play one an- other on a league basis, with a 2-0 win over a peculiarly lacklustre Poland, and finished it by beating the group favorite, Portugal, 1-0. The team's qualification from a relatively weak group-which, in addition to no-hopers Poland, also included the inexperienced and unrated United States-was moderatelysurpris- ing. But it looked, at first, as though Korea had been too successful for its own good: by winning the group out- right, it only succeeded in earning itseJ{ a game against Italy; which had unexpect- edly lost to Croatia and crept through its group in second place, after a nervy 1-1 draw with Mexico. The Italians have always had a strange approach to football. Their players look like pop stars, and the squad almost always includes at least two forwards whom every other country in the world would kill for; all the outward signs sug- gest flamboyance and a sense of stylIsh adventure. But traditionally they playa stupe:f}ringly defensive game, as If too much scoring would somehow cause peo- ple to doubt their masculinity. The Ital- ian way is to score once, and then refuse to cross the halfway line for the remain- der of the game. Against the Koreans, Italy duly scored its goal, and then con- tented itself by preventing the enthusi- astic but unseasoned host nation from playing. With a couple of minutes left, however, a defensive mistake gave the Koreans an equalizer; even then, with just seconds remaining, the Italian striker Christian Vieri was presented with an unmissab1e chance to settle the match. He missed. At this stage, the Italians had no one to blame but themselves; how- ever, in the extra -time "golden goal" pe- riod (in which the game ends as soon as anyone scores), a couple of bad decisions persuaded them that they could blame the referee and his assistants instead. A goal was disallowed because of a bad off- side decision, and then Francesco Totti,